Amazon's Prime Day breaks records

With more than 100 million products purchased during the 36-hour sale Monday and Tuesday, this year’s Prime Day surpassed all other days as the largest shopping event in Amazon’s history.

When comparing 36-hour periods, Prime Day 2018 reached higher sales than Cyber Monday, Black Friday and the previous Prime Day. It was also the biggest event for Amazon devices ever, with the Amazon Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice remote and the Echo Dot making the top deals.

“Prime Day offers us a unique opportunity to thank Prime members with our best deals,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO worldwide consumer of Amazon. “Extending Prime Day to a day and a half this year allowed us to further reward members with unbeatable deals, access to exclusive new products and unforgettable experiences that highlight the many benefits of a Prime membership.”

Amazon also offered a week of deals at Whole Foods Market stores where customers saved millions of dollars, according to a company release.

Other Prime Day 2018 takeaways:

• More people joined Prime July 16 than any other single day

• July 16 was the largest sales day for Fire TV devices and Kindle e-readers on Amazon globally

• Small and medium size businesses selling on Amazon took in more than $1 billion in sales

• Customers purchased more than five million items in each of the following categories: Toys, Beauty products, PCs and computer accessories, Apparel and Kitchen products.

• July 17 was the biggest sales day for smart home devices in Amazon history, with over a million devices sold.

Amazon did have some issues at the start of Prime Day when the the website didn’t work properly for some customers. During the crash, customers could still search for regular items through normal search bars, access their shopping carts and click through Amazon devices, but customers couldn’t make purchases during the first hour of the sale.

Customers also weren’t able to scan through the Lightning Deals. The main page gave users an option to click “Shop Deals by Interest” or “Shop All Deals,” but when clicking the links, customers were booted back to the main page.

A retail discount aggregator, lovethesales.com, estimates Amazon lost more than $99 million in missed sales.

FIVE FAST READS

• Golden Nugget owners selling restaurant

• Smoothie, supplement shop looks to open in Huber Heights

•Sears announces more layoffs amid store closures

•Turkish, Russian grocery store to open in Huber Heights

•June retail sales continue to show growth

In Other News

Child, 4, slightly injured as 6-year-old fires gun; sheriff urges gun...

Northeastern providing resources following death of Kenton Ridge...

Hamilton OKs plan for data center project in Riverside neighborhood

Urbana named best hometown by Ohio Magazine